Home Away From Home

     Holiday Inn's slogan for years was "The best surprise is no surprise."  I think this is an excellent credo for any hotel chain.  Averaging around 8 to 11 nights away from home per month, flight attendants develop a lot of preferences in the hotel experience.

     These can probably all be boiled down to "No Surprises".

--- 

     When crews get to their floors in a hotel it's a common practice to say:  "Check your room."  This involves unlocking our room (hopefully, the key works) and pulling our bags far enough into the room to prop open the door.  Then we check behind curtains, make sure any balcony doors or windows are locked, look behind couches, check in closets, etc.

     (I always pay extra attention to looking behind the shower curtain since everyone knows that's where serial killers enjoy hanging out.)

     Then we poke our heads back into the hallway and exchange thumbs up or comments like:  "Your room okay?"  "Yep.  I'm okay."  "Sleep tight."  

     We used to always make sure everyone did room checks.  If someone was on a different floor we would call to check on them.  I think the general thought was that we were all so young and cute there could easily be packs of predators lying in wait wherever we went.

     Years of finding no one under the bed, as well as the fact that we're now so much older (and more ornery), has made us more lax about this.  We still check, but it's become pretty cursory.

     These days when someone asks "Do you want to check your room?" the other person is more likely to say:  "Nah...if there's anyone in there I'll just kill them with my bare hands and leave the body in the hallway."   

     Or:  "Nah...it might be someone cute."

     But there are some stories that remind us it's always a good idea to have each other's backs.  (Or at least be there to laugh at each other.)

---

     All crew members have had the unpleasant experience of being given the key to a room that already has a guest in it.  There are images burned in our brains from these types of scenarios that we can not shake, no matter how hard we try to forget.  (Those deadbolts and chains aren't just for the protection of the occupant.  They also protect the emotional well-being of any unsuspecting soul that wanders in unexpectedly.  Eeek!)

     As creepy as it is to walk in on someone watching TV in their boxers or, you know, doing whatever wearing, well, whatever...

     It's even creepier when you walk all the way into a room before it slowly dawns on you that it's already occupied.  You might see clothes laying on the bed, a can of soda, or hear water running in the bathroom.  These moments reinforce the wisdom of having the door propped open.  It allows for a speedier retreat when the hairy, naked, guy, walks out of the bathroom.

---

     My scariest hotel experience was when I got down on the floor to look under a bed...and saw someone looking back at me.

     I screamed.

     Loud.

     It took a second to register that there was this weird shiny brass kick plate along the bottom of the bed frame and that scary person looking back was ME.   

     In that instance the captain was waiting just outside the door.  Even though, as I said, I screamed really loud...when I walked back into the hall with my heart trying to hammer it's way out of my rib cage, he just said:  "Room okay?"

     I like to think he would have come in and checked eventually if it had been an assassin under the bed.

---

          I've had some bad maintenance issues in my rooms from time to time.

          I once woke up and it was raining...on my bed.  Apparently the roof in this hotel   
     needed some work.  I called the front desk to change rooms, but "there wasn't another 
     room available."

          They sent up a a big, burly, guy I wouldn't normally open the door to at 2 
     a.m. on a rainy night in Baltimore.  Together we managed to pull the massive bed and 
     it's heavy platform out into the middle of the room.  

          I pulled the bedding up from the side of the bed and slept crossways on the drier parts.  

---

          I once walked into a hotel bathroom and the entire toilet bowl was shattered and 
     spread all over the floor in a pool of water.  It looked like someone had taken a 
     sledgehammer to it.

          Seems like the kind of thing the maids might have noticed...

---

   

     Gail, a no-nonsense flight attendant from New Orleans just told our crew a story about getting to her hotel room in Palm Springs.

     She did a quick check when she got to her room, didn't see anything, and started settling in.  Something made her think that she hadn't checked underneath the bed.

     She walked over to the bed, kneeled down, lifted the bedspread...and saw two eyes staring back her.  She followed my lead and screamed.  In her case it wasn't her own reflection under there.     

                Out from under the bed comes this white cat looking at her all mad, like she was     
          the intruder.

     She told us she pulled the phone into the closet and called downstairs.

     "Why from the closet?" we asked.

     “Terrified of cats.” she said.

     When she told the front desk there was a cat in her room they said:  "What color is it?"

              Were they running a cat house?  How many were they looking for? 

     They told her the couple in the room next to hers had a cat that went missing.  Apparently, when the maid cleaned the room she'd propped open the door to the adjoining room and the cat had gotten out.

---

     My friend, Geno, once walked into a hotel room and heard a booming voice from behind the curtains say:  "Don't turn on the light."  (This is definitely, for sure, for certain, Not the kind of surprise we like to get at the end of a long day.)

     The man in his room turned out to be some sort of law enforcement officer on a stake-out.  The front desk gave the officer the key to an unused room...but didn't clear it with other hotel staff so the room would stay unoccupied.  The officer had the window wide open, though it was the middle of winter.  He explained he didn't want to draw attention to himself with a fogged up window. 

     Geno said the room never did warm up.  

     Naturally, there were no other rooms they could move him to.

---

     Nancy, a woman riding on the jump seat with me this week, told me about an incident when she was a brand new flight attendant.   

     She was flying with this really senior flight attendant.   Nancy's room was quite a ways down the hall from the rest of the crew.  She checked her room and stepped back in the hallway to give the thumbs up to the rest of the crew.  

     Just as she looked down the hallway a hand grabbed the senior flight attendants arm and yanked her down.  Nancy saw the woman's legs disappearing into the room.  She sprinted down the hallway in horror. 

     When she got to the door the rest of her crew were all in the room laughing hysterically at Nancy's look of terror.  

---

      Not only do we like to have the room to ourselves when we get there...we like to know we can keep it that way.

      Kevin, who's on my crew this month, told me about being on a trip to Orlando years ago.  The crew was staying at an old-fashioned motel-type place with doors facing into a courtyard.  (Which our contract no longer allows.)  When he walked in his room it was really hot and humid.  He opened the large windows overlooking the courtyard and blasted the air conditioner to air it out.  He then stripped off his uniform and headed toward the shower.   

     Suddenly, a girl from his crew ripped open the curtains from outside and said:  "We're meeting for dinner at 6."  (The rest of the crew had stayed outside their rooms discussing when to meet.)  

                They all stood there staring into the room.

---

      Another fun hotel experience Kevin had was when he woke up to loud scratching noises in his room in Chicago.  There was an air duct crawlway just above the door.  When he looked through the air vent he could see beady little eyes.   

     A very large, and very pissed off rat was stuck in this very small area.   

     He called down to the front desk to get another room.  Again - "no other room was available."  (Are you noticing a theme here?  We don't always stay in hotels with 100 percent occupancy...but when we do, there’s usually a rodent, an undercover officer, or some major maintenance issue in your room.)  They said they'd send someone up to deal with the problem.

     Ten minutes later a maintenance guy shows up with a coffee pot full of boiling water.   The guy walks past Kevin and turns to fling the entire pot of hot water through the vent.  (EEEyyeeeuuuueeeewwww!!!)

     Kevin heard nothing else from the rat and got a good night's sleep.  Problem solved.

---

     Maybe it's not surprising that it was Kevin who very conscientiously waited outside my door in Columbus tonight for me to do a room check.  Luckily, there was no one, (and no creature) in my room.